Why am I Here?

Why am I here?


This is a small question with a big meaning. Martin Heidegger said that “some things are obscured by obviousness”, and look like this question is one of them. If I try to answer that question in a biology meaning, I can answer as “I am here because one day my parents by pleasure, or because they wanted another child conceived me.” However, that answer will finish just there, and won’t really go to the real meaning of my life. That small answer opens another question “How to live?” I am catholic, so I try to answer this question on a religion’s meaning. The answer that I got was “The roads of God are mysterious. Don’t try to understand then, just live on the best way possible, and always be ready for when God calls.” After think and without offence anyone or questioned my faith, I looked that answer as little bit empty. Yes, I will be ready to when God call me, and try to do what is good for me, for my family, and my friends. However, what will I do until God calls me?

At that point I was just stuck. I didn’t really answer the question, I just evaded it. I was probably asking the wrong question, or my mind was thinking on others thinks. Look like I am the kind of person that just accept the problems without question them. However, my friends told me that it is not truth, I am one of the people that questioned everything more that ones, and they are right.

This will probably looks like a strategic withdrawal, but I am just trying to answer this question on anther perspective. After re-read the first paragraph, I decided to answer the question “How to live?” This question looks easier to answer probably because I am the one who decided the way of live my life, or because I already have lived part of that answer. Advertence, this way of live is not the final one, but it is the one that I am using now.

I decided to move to USA, let on the past my friends, my life style, and in the process spend two whole years just learning English. The principle of equivalent trade in alchemist is simple, “in order to get something, you should sacrifice something of the equal value”. I sacrificed my old life in order to get a new one. On this new life, I will study hard. I will become a Mechanical Engineer and help the humanity to break the dependence of the petroleum. That will help the environment, and will help to create a better world for everyone. That is my dream, a dream that I need to create doing my best, especially on the college and university.

The life is not just work, is also share that is why I also try to become a better friend, and person. I am... well that is just another story.

Saikano, "The last love song on this little planet"

At the beginning of the Third World War, in a little town (Hokkaido), Japan, a beautiful love’s story happens between two third year high school students. Shuji, who is on the middle of discovering himself as an almost young adult, and Chise, a shy little girl who always is saying sorry, are the protagonist of “The Last love song on this little planet.” They begging a relationship with a lot of problems, a couple of time they broke up, but they never forget what they really feel for the other. She sometimes disappears during attacks and when those disappears happen a strange kind of airplane save the city. The war continue to be worst and worst, this little couple witch started on war time, start to get trouble when Shuji discover that the strange airplane that always save the city is his little girlfriend. She starts to talk about dead as just part of the life, in a try of decrease the idea of that she kills a lot of person. A relationship between a solder, and a civilian that doesn’t want to know about the war is always hard. Sometimes they try to escape but the army always fined her. Until one day that they run away to another town and live like husband and wife for a while, until they get out of medicine, a medicine that Chise needs in order to be alive. Shuji without known what to do, call the army, they took Chise away from him, and he return to his town. Shuji lost a lot of his friend thanks to the war and now also lost his girlfriend. Time pass, Chise starts to be a 100% time weapon and Shuji trying to help his friends and on the school during this war. At the end, Shuji and Chise find themselves again on their little secret places.
Chise is now more machine that human but doesn’t understand why she has that strong feeling for that person, Shuji, and why is she all nights on that places. They talk for a while and then they understand that before Chise become machine, the only idea, the only desire, the will of the real Chise was to love Shuji and to be mother of his children. That is why the machine Chise still has the same will. They enjoy that last night together, the next day the world will be destroyed. Shuji, the only one who has love Chise, told her that he wants to live. Chise, with her last life breath save him. Now, the world is gone, the only person on the whole planet is Shuji, nothing else remain, not even a cherry blossom. However, Shuji is happy because a light of live is with him, the light of the life Chise will be always with him.

Bushido

Bushido, The behavior of the Japanese’s Culture

Today is common on occident to listen and to read about the Japanese’s culture. As example, there are anime, manga, video games, movies, which are in the marker since a while already. However, how good do we understand them? When we see or read these expressions of the Japanese’s culture, do we really understand what the motivation behind the actions is? For example, do we understand why on the animate movie of Disney “Mulan” the Geisha Sensei of the country, told to Mulan "you will never be able to get the pride of her family", after Mulan didn’t pass the Geisha’s test? Was so important for a family to have a Geisha as a daughter? Also, after the army fond that Mulan was really a woman, why the law said that she should be executed? These are just two example of a single occidental movie with a oriental theme. However, If we start to recall anime by anime, movie by movie, manga by manga, the list of behavior that an occidental person won’t understand will be as big as the number of sand grains on a beach. However, there is a single code that is behind all these behaviors, the name of this code is Bushido.
Bushido can be described in this way “…Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the samurai were required or instructed to observe... More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten... It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career." (Inazo) On this definition Bushido just refer to the samurai life; however, in any expression of the Japanese’s culture the people are able to feel the Bushido behind the action.